Mar 20, 2025
Today being the Manila day of our tour, the first thing they did was take us on a visit to the only tourist attraction in Manila – Intramuros. A shorter and less detailed tour than our private guide yesterday, so we didn’t learn much that we hadn’t already known. However, there are a couple of things that we didn’t realise so probably others don’t too.
There are lots of Santiago’s around the world, and the original part of the Spanish settlement here in Manila was called Fort Santiago. What I didn’t realise is that Santiago is Saint James in Spanish. Supposedly, in a Spanish battle many centuries ago, the King had a vision of Saint James leading them to victory, and to this day Saint James or Santiago is the Spanish patron saint for making sure you don’t get creamed in a war.
Somebody in our tour group asked if Manila was subject to flooding, being at the junction of the ocean and a river, and the answer was a resounding yes. We were told that there’s a local expression that says “when a frog urinates, manila floods”.
There was a statue of King Charles IV in the main square who, despite being a Spanish colonial king, is revered because he decreed that the smallpox vaccination should be brought from Spain to Philippines, which was no mean feat given that it had to be a live culture and refrigerated. Seems that they vaccinated some travellers and some fruit and vegetables, and left it up to the science boffins in Manila to extract the vaccine from their blood, and cultivate it for local use.
Well, that’s about it for Manila, apart from the endless traffic. We were taken to a local restaurant for lunch with the traditional Filipino dish – adobo, and then shuttled to the airport to wait for our flight to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan, the first of the islands that we’re going to visit, south of Manila.
Seems that the skies over the Philippines are a bit congested, and we had quite a wait before we were cleared for takeoff, so we ended up arriving a bit late and had to scramble to sort ourselves out in our room before we headed off for a group dinner.
Went to a very interesting island restaurant, kind of indoors and outdoors with lots of tropical foliage and teak construction. Lovely smorgasbord meal with chicken, pork belly, calamari, tamarind soup, noodles and the inevitable rice, whilst listening to the theme from Love Story.
Canvas Boutique Hotel
US Army Headquarters in Fort Santiago
Manila Cathedral
Our group of white, privileged tourists
Our evening restaurant
Canvas Boutique Hotel